Isn’t Anyone Teaching America’s Youth Any Social Skills?

American society is suffering in the youth department. America’s young people do not seem to know what it means to be courteous, how to listen, or how to carry themselves comfortably among people they don’t know.

What has happened? It is getting so that you are surprised—and enormously pleased—when you are able to carry on a meaningful, intelligent, and pleasant conversation with anyone who is under 25.

Over and over, I will walk into a shop, go into a restaurant, or attend some social event, to find that I am surrounded by young Americans who don’t have the faintest idea how to behave toward their fellow Americans. “Good Morning!” I might say, as I walk into a shop, and the young clerks give me a blank look, like I invaded their space. And when I need to ask them for help . . . watch out! They skitter away like frightened mice. Gee, I hate to interrupt you while you count hangers or fold shirts, but, aren’t you being paid to, um, excuse me, actually help customers?

Or I meet someone’s teenage son or daughter, and try to strike up a conversation by asking them questions about themselves. They look at you— if you are able to get them to look you in the eye at all—as if you are a lab specimen (or maybe, like they are the lab specimen), and it is difficult to get anything more than a conversation-stunting monosyllabic grunt.

Forget smiling or laughing. Forget even being able to talk about the weather: they have no notion of small-talk. Yes, I know small-talk is not particularly interesting, but a person should nevertheless be able to engage in it, if only to have decent social intercourse with an individual with whom you have absolutely nothing in common.

Maybe it’s because these kids have never had many opportunities to talk to other humans face to face. Here’s what I imagine: they have grown up in homes where both parents work, and they were stuck in a room with 20 other screaming kids all day. They have no brothers or sisters, or maybe one sibling. When their parents picked them up from daycare or school and came home, the children were put in front of the television or at the table, while the parents tried to do all those things that have to be done to keep a home and a family running. And as they grew up, these children occupied themselves with computers, computer games, television, cell-phones, and text-messaging. But they rarely got to actually engage another human being in social interaction.

I don’t mean this to be an indictment against parents for working; people will do what they feel they have to do. And in a lot of ways, the working parents of today have no choice but to curb their children’s outside activities—after all, it’s not like when I was a kid, where I could just ride my bicycle to a friend’s house or go to the park or playground by myself.

But if a child’s life develops a pattern in which he has severely limited opportunities to interact with different people, there has to be some extra effort to instill in him good social skills. Without them, a young person is facing a terrible disadvantage.

It is not that these kids do not have friends, but they seem to be comfortable only with other kids who “speak their language.” When confronted by someone outside of their limited social sphere, they have a difficult time adapting, and they lack the rudiments of basic polite intercourse that can help them overcome social hurdles.

I am absolutely sure they have personalities . . . somewhere . . . but they haven’t been trained to direct those personalities outward, to project who they are and what they think positively and respectfully. They lack confidence in an unfamiliar situation, and they lack perception in judging what social skills need to be applied in a given situation. Mostly, they seem to lack the knowledge that there is such a thing as a social skill.
Someone who does not know how to read social situations and adapt to them by employing the appropriate conduct is usually doomed to live within the confines of one social sphere. That is not an evil, in itself, but it limits life’s possibilities. You cannot fault a person for being reluctant to place himself in a situation where he is acutely uncomfortable. Worse, it is hard to fault someone who hasn’t been trained to sense when everyone else is uncomfortable with him.

And it is not that everybody has to be a society gadabout. Someone who has good manners, is comfortable in his own skin, and is genuinely congenial can usually handle himself equally well at a country barbecue or the royal opera, no matter what his social background.
But in my observation, not enough young people are being given the tools they need to feel at home in any situation, and, furthermore, I don’t think they are even taught that social skills are as important—and in some cases, more important—than other skills they may need in life to succeed.

To some Americans, this may seem like a trivial thing. But the quality of life—our happiness—usually hinges upon how well we interact with other people: our family members, our spouses, our friends, our communities. If we cannot open ourselves up to find new friends and new experiences by developing healthy and productive relationships with a broad range of people—at home, at work, in our communities—we stunt our own opportunities to live a full life.

America has traditionally been the land of opportunity; it would be a shame if America’s young people never saw life’s opportunities, let alone allowed those opportunities materialize into the fulfillment of their aspirations. Americans need to work on developing American youths into happy, confident adults who can relate well to other people.

The well-being of America’s youth is not someone else’s responsibility. It is yours. Be an American.

Related articles by Zemanta

• “Are computers and the Internet making people a little bit autistic?”
• Study: On Teens, Games, & Civic Engagement

No related posts.